Going Cold
by MoreThingsInHeavenAndEarth
Summary: "Lestrade didn't know about high-functioning sociopath, but a high-functioning drug addict Sherlock certainly was."  An exploration of Sherlock on drugs and Lestrade fulfilling the role of somebody who cares.  Angsty.  Will be a two-shot.
1. Before

_**DISCLAIMER: **I don't own Sherlock. _

_'Tis just my little exploration into the drugs side of Sherlock, and into Lestrade, who I like. It'll be a two-shot. I've tried really very hard with this because dialogue is not my natural forte and I wanted to be in-character. I hope you enjoy it._

"You need to get off the drugs." Lestrade wished he had never met the man lying in front of him in the nasty police holding cell. If he hadn't met him then he wouldn't feel remotely responsible for him – he'd be just another young man wasting his life on cocaine.

"You can't tell me what to do, Inspector. I'm cleverer than you." He was very nearly on the comedown; he could hear it in his voice.

"If you keep taking this amount of cocaine then you won't stay 'cleverer' Sherlock." Lestrade leaned forward. "I'm serious, you're damaging yourself. I'll send you for a brain scan if you want."

"I don't need a brain scan." He waved his hand in the air lazily. "My brain is brilliant."

Lestrade marvelled at how together Sherlock Holmes continued to be, even when he had spent the night completely off his head. His shoes were still on and the laces were still tied, his trousers still held their crease, his shirt was clean and buttoned. He didn't know about high-functioning sociopath, but a high-functioning drug addict he certainly was. The only tell-tale signs of a habit were the track-marks on his forearm, but even they looked neat and precise. "How long has it been since you've eaten?"

"Yesterday, probably. Maybe the day before." Sherlock still had his eyes closed, but he began to make motions as if he was playing the violin.

"Do you want me to get Donovan to get you something – toast, bacon sandwich?"

"Oh can you imagine her face? You should send her just for that. I won't eat it though. I'm not hungry."

"Coffee, then."

"Tut tut, Inspector. Caffeine is a drug and you want to get me off those." His tone was lazily arrogant.

Lestrade could feel irritation building. "No. I'm _going_ to get you off them."

"I don't know if I can."

"No. You don't know if you want to."

"Yes. That too. But it's the same thing. If i don't want to then I can't. It's cyclical. Round and round and round..." he trailed off, humming the old nursery rhyme.

Lestrade pulsed with anger. "Do you want to know what I should be doing now, Sherlock? It's a Sunday morning - 7'o'clock. You'd know that if you hadn't spent the last 12 hours shooting up. I should be just getting up to play with my daughter. She's 5 years old now and she's mad for dinosaurs. Every weekend she wakes me up so we can play let's pretend dinosaurs, and then she helps me make breakfast. We have full English on a Sunday. She carries up the stairs to her mum then we sit together and I read the papers and she watches TV. That's what I should be doing - pretending to be a triceratops. Instead I'm sat here with you, wasting my time on someone who doesn't want to be helped. I can leave you Sherlock, you're good but you're not so good that I can't do without you. If you don't clean yourself up I'll stop using you, I'll stop asking you for help. Then what will you do with your brilliant brain?"

Sherlock had rolled onto his left side so he was looking at Lestrade. There was something uncomfortably crestfallen, nearly childish in his face. "Do you really mean that?"

"You're becoming a liability. It's harder to work with you. I can't trust what you say if I don't know what you're on when you're saying it."

"I always get it right. Always. I got it right last week and I was on morphine. I got it right last night and I had £500 of cocaine in my veins. I always get it right."

"That doesn't stand up in court." The two men stared at each other.

"But I don't know what to do with myself!" Sherlock shouted, suddenly. "I get so bored and I'll do anything to stop it! You find me a way to stop being bored and I won't need to take anything."

Lestrade didn't know what to say. The things he was thinking (counselling, therapy, anti-depressants, clinics) were not things you would associate with Sherlock Holmes. It was a shame. If he'd ever met someone who needed a good session with a psychotherapist it was the young man in front of him. You just had to look in his eyes.

"I don't know about that. I just know that you'll only get more and more unhappy if you carry on with this." He gestured to the marks on his pale forearms. "You'll kill yourself with it. I've seen hundreds of people like you, and most of them end up dead."

Sherlock lay on the concrete, mumbling. "I don't want that. Not yet. There's no satisfaction yet." He began to drag himself up till he was slumped against the wall. Now it was easy to see his drug use - shadowed eyes, rake-thin body, clear signs of chronic fatigue. "What's your daughter's name?" He sounded much more tired now, and he kept running his hands over his face or through his hair.

"Emily."

"Emily. It's a nice name. I expect she's pretty isn't she - she'll take after your wife." Every word was causing him considerable effort.

"Yeah, she does. Lucky for her." Lestrade couldn't help but smile.

Sherlock nearly smiled himself then. "Go home. Go home and indulge your daughter and make your breakfast. I'll stay here until your shift starts tonight."

"And then?"

"And then I'll try." His hand convulsed around his left arm. "But, I'm not doing any twelve step programme, I'm not going to any group therapy - my name is Sherlock and I'm a drug addict – I'm not taking any methadone. I'll do it my way."

"You'll do it _my_ way." He wouldn't, Lestrade knew that, but it didn't hurt to try.

"Can we start with that coffee you mentioned? And maybe the toast, too." He reached into his pocket. "Can I smoke in here?"

"In a police holding cell? No."

"Pathetic..." Sherlock muttered. "I'll be giving these up next. People do so love to victimise minority groups."

Lestrade smirked. "I'll get Donovan onto that breakfast."

"Yes, do. And go and make yours." Sherlock pushed himself up the wall into an imitation of a standing position and swayed over to the little bed. He turned his back to Lestrade and curled up tight.

Lestrade turned to let him sleep it off, but he hadn't quite left the room when Sherlock spoke again. "No-one ever played let's-pretend with me." Lestrade thought he might understand that - a small Sherlock probably wanted to play murderers and victims. Or serial killers. The younger man sighed heavily. "Maybe that was the problem. Keep playing it with Emily, inspector. You wouldn't want her ending up like me, would you?"

That haunted Lestrade for weeks. If there was one person Lestrade didn't want his daughter to grow up to be like, it was Sherlock Holmes.

_So, thankyou for reading. If you did or didn't enjoy it, could you please let me know in a reveiw? I post on here partly because people help me improve by telling me what I'm doing right and wrong. Next part should be up either tommorow or the day after._


	2. During

**_DISCLAIMER - I DO NOT OWN SHERLOCK._**

_So. Part Two is here. I've decided I need a part three. I have things to add in (including something pointed out to me by 'Arisprite') that didn't work in this chapter. Hopefully you'll understand when you've read. Part Three is written, and short. Anyway. I hope you enjoy this part :)_

Outside the rain was lashing down and the wind was blowing in the trees. Inside, Detective Insoector Lestrade was Reading his daughter a bedtime story - Harry Potter. As he gave her a hug she whispered "I do like you Reading to me Daddy, but Stephen Fry reads it better. He does all the voices."

Lestrade laughed and hugged Emily closer. It was then he heard the familiar beeping from inside his jacket pocket. A text. The evening he had planned (a couple of beers, a takeaway, watching Inspector Morse in the sofa with his wife) slipped away from him in one wistful moment as he opened the text.

**In difficulties. Appreciate assistance. Come quickly.**

**- SH**

He did, of course. He did it because Sherlock Holmes was a brilliant man, and Lestrade felt as though he was always fighting for him to be a good one. He did it because if he didn't go then no-one else would. Parents dead and Sherlock would rather join them than ask his brother for help. He didn't have friends, he certainly didn't have a girlfriend (Sally Donovan had been given a very firm "I'm married to my work" when she had thrown herself at him when they'd first met). He had Lestrade, who wasn't a friend and wasn't a colleague. He wasn't a mentor and he'd never flatter himself enough to think he was s father-figure. He was just there. He was just looking out for him.

The flat Sherlock was living in at the moment (he got through them at a steady rate) was in Bloomsbury. From the outside it was posh, but inside it was a mess. It smelt like a chemistry lab and an abattoir and looked like a bunker. Sherlock was sat in an armchair, looking at something on the table. Lestrade was shocked - he looked haunted. He was sweating and his hands were shaking. His eyes were red and shadowed. His skin was like milk.

"Sherlock? Are you okay?"

"I'd like you to take this away from me, Inspector." His gaze didn't leave the box on the table. His voice shook like his body. "I want you to throw it out the window or into the fire or down a storm drain."

Lestrade moved over to the box and opened it. Inside were a couple of hypodermic needles, a little box of morphine pills with the Barts logo stamped on them and a packet of White powder. He sighed.

"I haven't taken anything. 2 weeks, 4 days. I'm clean. I got through the boredom, fine. Took the train down to a place I know some old IRA men, poked about s bit. One of them tried to shoot me. Did the trick." He was still looking at the place the box had been. "Now it's the other thing I need, the morphine. It's this new case you've given me - the boarding house one. I can't stop thinking about it. I haven't slept for 3 days. I haven't eaten since yesterday. My brain is moving too fast. I can't cope." He looked Lestrade. "A little bit of morphine and it all goes away, Inspector. I'll go to sleep and my brain will slow down and I can catch up with myself. Not too much. Just a bit will do and I'll be better in the morning."

Lestrade sat down on the chair opposite him. He thought about giving him some - it seemed sensible, it made more sense than the cocaine. That was illegal and Lestrade had spent his first years as a policeman on the drugs squad - he saw what that stuff did to people. But morphine was used in hospitals, wasn't it? That meant it was safe. It was medicine.

"Don't let me have any. I know I've made a convincing argument but don't let me have any. I told you I was going to do this my way and my way is nothing at all." His teeth were chattering.

"So why do you need me?"

"I don't trust myself. And I trust you." Lestrade wasn't quite sure he'd said it -the second he'd closed his mouth he'd opened it again to be violently, horribly sick.

Lestrade spent the next few hours with a man who looked like Sherlock Holmes, but he couldn't actually be him. This was not the same man who curled his lip in the police station, who gave the impression that he could barely cope to be around such idiots as the police force. This was not the man who strode around the place looking like he was had been born in a suit and Bellstaff coat, a man whose emotional range veered between self-congratulation and disgust.

This man was lying crouched on the floor, pulling at his hair, sobbing and screaming like a madman. He looked like he was in a waking nightmare; if you could film this night and show it to teenagers then they'd never touch drugs. He mumbled and muttered things that made no sense but sounded terrible anyway. Lestrade spent his time either trying to cool Sherlock down (his temperature was sky high) or calm him down. More than once he simply thought _'why am I here?_' But nearly as soon as he'd thought that another part of his mind whispered _'thank God you are._' This man was a genius, an absolute genius. But at heart this man was a troubled and desperate person who needed something that even he himself couldn't identify. He needed saving from himself and Lestrade was the one who was here to do it this time. One day he hoped that someone else could step in and do it better, because he had no clue how to do it beyond cold flannels and sick buckets.

At about 4 in the morning Sherlock began to settle. He pulled himself off the floor and onto the settee, laying spread-eagled in his pyjama shorts. Lestrade couldn't help but look at his forearms. Sherlock had been telling the truth - there were scars and bruises on his veins but they were old. He hadn't been shooting up. He could see his bony ribs through his chest and stomach as his breath heaved in and out. The man needed to eat more - the fact he was often malnourished wasn't helping anything. He mumbled something.

"What? What do you want?"

"I'm scared."

Lestrade didn't know what to say. "Of what Sherlock? There's no-one here. It's fine."

"I'm here. I'm scaring myself. I don't want to feel like this anymore." His voice was cracked and dry.

"You won't. You're giving them up - you won't have to feel like this again. You don't need to be scared." Lestrade was hideously uncomfortable and inexperienced. He wasn't a bloody therapist. That's what this man needed. Not him - a 47 year old policeman with a vague horror of vulnerability in men. "Let's get you into bed, Sherlock. Have a sleep, have a lie down." He helped Sherlock into bed. His room was oddly neat. He wondered if that was because he didn't use it very often. As he looked at the world's first and best Consulting Detective lying on a pillow, pulling the duvet up to his chin, he realised how young he still was. 25, 26? Something like that. Young anyway. Young enough to be scared by what he was going through. Young enough to be scared by his own brilliance, however much he usually covered it up.

"Will you put the radio on? The World Service, please. I like to hear what they're saying..." He was asleep (thank God) before Lestrade had got it tuned properly.

Mooching quietly out into the kitchen he put the kettle on. He wanted a big mug of string black coffee. He also wanted to pluck up the nerve to telephone someone he didn't really want to.

As the phone connected he cleared his throat.

"Hello."

"Hello?" Lestrade managed to be thrown by the way the other man had answered the phone. "I mean, hello. Is this Mycroft Holmes?"

"Yes. Is this Detective Inspector Lestrade?" The man sounded bored. He knew exactly who was on the end of the phone.

"It is. How – how did you know?"

Mycroft Holmes laughed. "Please. I was waiting for you to telephone since you had the misfortune to be summoned to my brothers flat last night."

Lestrade thought that Mycroft sounded like Sherlock except with more of a sneer. "Yeah. Well. I think you should visit him more often yourself. Have you any idea what kind of state Sherlock's in right now?"

"I should imagine he's asleep after a drug-addled night." The bastard actually yawned.

"He's off them."

Mycroft made a noise of interest. "Really? How did you manage that? Mummy tried for years, ever since he first started stealing the morphine from the hospital."

"I told him I'd stop using him unless he got clean. But that's not what I'm ringing about. I think he should come and stay with you for a bit, while he's going cold-turkey." Lestrade ran a hand over his face. "I don't mind helping him out now and then, but he needs someone there all the time and I can't do that. I have a family and I live on the other side of London. He could really do with some support."

"You don't think that I have a life of my own as well?"

"He. Is. Your. _Brother_." But you wouldn't bloody know it.

"Arrangements have been made."

"Excuse me? What does that mean?"

"It means that tomorrow morning somebody will come to collect my brothers belongings and move them into my apartment in Knightsbridge. He will be looked after in a way both he and I will find acceptable."

"Right. Well. That's good then. I'm glad." Lestrade nodded. "I'll let you get on then."

"Thankyou, Inspector." Mycroft put the phone down first.

Lestrade grimaced. What kind of upbringing created children who grew into people like Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes? His phone beeped again, it was a text from Mycroft Holmes.

**If he has nightmares then he likes being read to. At least, he did.  
- MH**

Lestrade stared at his phone for a minute. Maybe Mycroft hadn't completely forgotten Sherlock was his little brother. He walked back into Sherlock's bedroom and picked up the book on the bedside table. When he looked at the title he smiled for the first time all night and took a big gulp of coffee. Even though he was still asleep, Lestrade cracked open the book and began reading from the first page. "Mr and Mrs Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive were perfectly normal, thankyou very much."

_I hope the end wasn't too cheesy! I imagine that he's reading because of some case he was working on. If you enjoyed this then please tell me, but if you want to point out things I can improve then please do :) AND I love that lots of people favourited/alerted this story (it's really flattering) but maybe if you did that it would be nice to let me know why you've done it by reviewing, please. _

_Next Part up tomorrow :)_


	3. After

**DISCLAIMER: I don't own Sherlock. BBC, Arthur Conan Doyle etc...**

**_This is the last part - I hope it's okay!_**

He was back at work within two weeks of being moved to Mycroft's and it was all as if nothing spectacular had happened at all. Sherlock Holmes came striding on to the crime scene being rude to Anderson and telling Lestrade it was all so simple it wasn't worth his while. When he did deign to look at the body of the man, he told them that the man had been killed with a household utensil (an iron) by his wife because he had just told her that he was leaving her. Inexplicably Sherlock also managed to tell them that they were both grieving over something that had happened recently - most probably the death of a child or baby.

When they were back at the station, just Sherlock and himself, Lestrade asked how things were going as he filled in paperwork.

"Things are going very well. The government seems to be in order and wasn't someone just telling me yesterday that we're going to have a 'barbeque summer', whatever that is." he had a perfectly innocent expression on his face.

"Sherlock... I meant how are things going with you? With being clean."

In response, Sherlock took off his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves. He gestured them in front of the Inspector like a child might show a teacher a painting that they had spent time and effort on and wished to be praised. "Look."

Lestrade did look. He saw no bruises, no sores, no scabs. All he saw were scars, pearly against the white skin. "That's great Sherlock, it really is." He felt proud of him, stupidly, ridiculously proud. "And the morphine?"

Sherlock sat back in his chair looking rather pleased with himself. "Nothing. You can check Bart's hospital records if you don't believe me. They'll be none missing." He yawned. "It really is _astonishing _what a person will do in order to be released from Mycroft's flat. It was worth putting up with the..." he coughed, "_side-effects_ just to escape from the constant revolving door of people begging his advice. It's truly nauseating."

The night Lestrade had spent at Sherlock's flat went unspoken between them. The side he had seen of Sherlock that night was gone again, the vulnerability a memory. He was glad. This was the Sherlock he had grown used to, even if he was a little friendlier today. Lestrade's thanks had been a short text from Sherlock the morning after.

**Your aid much appreciated.**

**- SH**

That was the equivalent of a sonnet, and Lestrade knew it.

"And how have the, ah, side-effects been?"

Just for a moment the younger man looked haunted. "It's not been a particularly enjoyable two weeks, but I have been assured by Mycroft's 'best people' that I'm through the worst." Sherlock made a little face as if to say he didn't trust them one bit.

Lestrade put down his pen and picked up his coffee mug. "You know, I have been wondering something. Why are you doing this, Sherlock? I mean, I don't think it's because I told you to stop."

"Lestrade, you wound me. Do you think I think so little of you?"

Lestrade just looked at him.

Sherlock sighed. "I'm doing it because what you said was true. I'll kill myself if I keep on doing the drugs. I might kill myself coming off them - I might, sometimes I really feel like I might - but I'd rather be in charge of my own death than be lying in Barts because my body had given up on me." He said the last bit with a disgusted sneer, as if the mortal body wasn't worth his time. "My father died in a hospital. He drank himself to death, Inspector. First his liver failed and then... Oh and then lots more complicated things happened that I've not bothered to remember."

Lestrade cleared his throat. "I'm, I'm sorry. I didn't know."

"You didn't know? Why on earth should you have known? And there's no need to be sorry. I'm not telling you because I need someone to talk to, because I still cry into my pillow over it. I'm telling you because you asked why I'm going cold." He touched his left arm again; let his fingers drift down the scars in a manner that was almost loving. "I don't want to be like my father. When he died it was so messy and unflattering. His mind was all there but his organs had abandoned him. I wonder - do I really want that to be me? Do I want to be betrayed by own body?" He sniffed disdainfully. "No. And I'm tired of my dependence on the drugs. I've never needed anything in my life; not even food, not really. Why should drugs be my exception?"

"Okay." What he had said made surprising sense. Lestrade's own mother had wasted away in a hospital from throat cancer. He could understand the thought process that told you _that won't be me_. "I'm glad. I'm glad you're getting off them."

"You're growing attached to me." Sherlock stood up. "Stop it."

Lestrade laughed. "I'm not attached to you. I'm attached to the cases I get signed off when you're around, and I'm most certainly attached to the bonus I get for exceeding my targets."

"Goodbye Inspector." Sherlock smiled.

"I'll text you when something turns up." He promised. "And Sherlock?"

"Yes?"

"Quirrell is after the stone. He wants it for Voldermort. It's not Snape at all." Lestrade really laughed this time, the look of shock on the detectives face was priceless. "Just got there last night with Emily. Thought you'd like to know."

**THE END.**

**_So, that's it. Thankyou very much for everyone who reviewed and favourited me, it's so flattering and nice to see a positive response to my work. Can I make the same plea as always - if you liked it please let me know, and if it didn't match up then let me know how to improve. AND if you alerted/favourited this then thankyou, but if you didn't review then I would really, really love it if you did please :) Thanks everyone for reading this!_**


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